Danuta Hübner in Greece: "In view of
the huge damage caused by the fires, the intervention of the European Solidarity
Fund can help citizens and local economies"

European regional Policy Commissioner, Danuta
Hübner is flying over the Peloponnese today by helicopter in order to start
to evaluate the damage caused by the fires of the last few days. She meets Prime
Minister Mr. Costas Karamanlis, the Minister of Economy and Finances Mr.George
Alogoskoufis and the Deputy Minister Mr. Christos Folias. She also meets the
President of the PASOK party, Mr. George Papandreou.

"I came today to express our European solidarity with all affected by
unprecedented disaster. We all feel Greeks these days. The European Commission
is determined to explore all possible means of support and assure the
mobilisation of available funds in order to help the affected citizens and local
economies as well as ensure the restoration of the natural landscape" Danuta
Hübner declared.

She indicated that as soon as the assessment of the damage is completed and
an action plan finalised by the authorities, the Commission will ensure funding
of specific actions for the damaged regions and the environment so as to help
these areas and sectors to recover. The Greek authorities have 10 weeks to
present to the Commission, the application for support from the European
solidarity fund. They have announced at the beginning of the week that they
intend to ask for financial aid. The Commission services stand ready to offer
any kind of guidance that may be required.

A threshold of intervention of the EU Solidarity Fund in case of major
catastrophes has been fixed for each Member State: for Greece, the threshold is
€1.066 billion euros of damage. Taking into account the scale announced by
the authorities (around 4 billion euros), the prospect of help from the
Solidarity Fund real. The aid could then be used to help finance a series of the
most urgent emergency operations, such as provisional housing, the repair of
basic infrastructures such as electricity, water, roads and cleaning up of
devastated land and villages. These measures will be agreed between the
Commission and the Greek authorities before the payment of the grant.

Since the creation of the Solidarity Fund in 2002, the recent catastrophe in
Greece would be one of the biggest where the aid of the Fund is needed.
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